It was the third Sunday of Easter: at 10 a.m., Pope John Paul II celebrated the Eucharist on the parvis of the Vatican Basilica and proclaimed six new Blesseds, among them the Servant of God, Sister Nemesia Valle. The six new Blesseds were all brothers and sisters who witnessed the encounter with the Risen Lord.
In the Easter climate, the invitation, then and now, is to allow ourselves to be surprised with open hearts by the paths of the Spirit.
Her experience as an educator
At the end of her novitiate in Vercelli, in 1868, the novice Giulia Valle received a new name with her religious habit: Sister Nemesia, the name of a martyr from the early centuries. She is delighted and makes the name her life programme: to witness her love for Jesus to the end, at any cost, forever.
She is sent to Tortona, to the Saint Vincent Institute: a primary school, a boarding school, an orphanage. She teaches in the primary school and French in the high school.
It is the right soil for sowing goodness.
Sister Nemesia is present where there is menial work to be done, suffering to be alleviated, where discomfort prevents peaceful relationships, where fatigue, pain, poverty limit life. Soon a voice spreads within the institute and in the city: “Oh, the heart of Sister Nemesia!”
Everyone is convinced that they have a special place in this heart that seems to have no boundaries: Sisters, orphans, pupils, families, the poor, clerics from the nearby seminary, young soldiers from the many barracks in Tortona all turn to her, seek her out as if she were the only Sister in the house.
When at the age of forty she is appointed superior of the community, Sister Nemesia is bewildered, but one thought encourages her: being superior means “serving”, so she can spend herself without measure and humbly faces the climb. The lines of her programme are drawn:
“Hasten the pace, without looking back, fixing on the one goal: God Alone!
To Him be the glory,
to others the joy,
to me the price to pay, to suffer but never to make others suffer.
I will be severe with myself
and all charity towards the sisters:
Love that gives itself is the only thing that remains”.
Today, 25 April 2024, let us commemorate the Beatification of Sister Nemesia to return, once again, to the source, the fount, of authentic evangelical life: “Love that gives itself”.
